Chương 91: Let's go whaling~

Rank 3 affinities are harder to alter… but they still exist and I'm here to help you unlock their potential. This is the Void page in a four part series. For Space, Entropy and Eternity pages, please head back to the index. There are two main Void mana alterations "Shrinking" and "Deletion". No matter which one your goal is, you should always start with deletion mana – it's easier for most cores and more importantly, having a good sense for it helps with Shrinking mana. Now.

As you no doubt know, while adding Void mana to a pure element it will eat away at a large portion of that element and then slowly bind into a magical material. While doing this a portion of your mana (the part actively eating the pure element) will resonate with that element more strongly. It's like... at the start of the spell part of your void mana is using itself up on the pure element and at the end the rest of your void mana can bind safely.

The resulting material "vaporizes" every element but the element it's bound to. A void iron sword needs an iron handle to be held correctly. Simple stuff. Near the start of your spell, however, before you created this "Anything but X" material, Void was more attuned to that X material. A portion of it was actually deletion mana. In this initial moment when Void is eating your X pure element focus on the portion of it resonating with the element. Grow it purposefully instead of letting it disappear.

Pull it out and abandon the rest of the "void" then bind it to a new material Y. As a simple example starting to delete Iron then binding it to copper to create Iron deleting Copper. At this point… if everything worked correctly you'll have made your first Deletion mana material. You'll have a copper sword that melts through simple iron like butter. A Copper garbage can for all your Iron scraps. This was a good first step… but it's a relatively limited form of deletion mana. Deletion mana is…

more abstract than a simple "deleting pure elements" scope. It's still a good first step because deletion mana tends to be stronger than void mana in its limited scope. More energy focused on one element instead of spread to multiple… or maybe deletion mana's just stronger in general. True deletion mana doesn't work on single elements and that's your next step. Pick several abstract concepts like "wood" or "grey things" or "bitter foodstuffs".

Start your process of with void mana deleting wood and then bind your deletion resonance to make "Wood deletion" materials. Use it on a pile of weapons and see if you can get a material that deletes weapons and only weapons – that makes fun shields or armour. If you really want a challenge try and make a material that deletes non-physical concepts like "Sound" or more specialized "Speech". That can make a fun silent floor for your dungeon.

A lot of those harder concepts are typically deletion mana affinity cores only… but even without that choice, you should be able to delete quite a wide array of concepts. As a bonus, if you get good at it you should be able to make deletion materials without that simple spell you used as a crutch at the start. Printing apple deletion copper straight from your system no apples required! The Second alteration of Void mana is "Shrinking" mana.

Stay with me now, If you practiced with deletion mana it will be easier but it's not technically required – please tell me you didn't skip all the way here? It's structured like this for a reason! The goal of shrinking mana is to rip all damaging properties out of void mana leaving it in its most "pure" of forms. To start. Slowly begin shrinking a large area the larger you have to work with the better to start.

Work as hard as you can to prevent anything from being "deleted" – no mass should be missing in your before and after! That's it. There's some tips that can help however. Imagining void mana is actually half shrinking mana and half deletion mana can help – many cores pretend they are "deleting the deletion part of the spell" or set it to "delete something that's impossible for it to delete like time". Another point that helps is to prevent a void singularity from forming in the middle of your shrunk area.

Typically when shrinking void mana really likes to shrink in a gradient – with the exact center pooling into a single rip in space. Keeping that point from forming… either holding it open and "not shrunk" or closed and "not ripped open again" are good mental models. As a typical sign it's working… all colour should have been removed from the mana fueling your spell. Any hints of purple in the darkness should have disappeared… and the black itself should be closer to grey.

The problem with shrinking mana is it's a gradient. A lot of non-shrinking mana cores will find their spells still have a hint of void in them unable to take that final step. If you think you have it right you can always make shrinking materials at this point – pills that shrink adventurers come with the system-assisted bonus of a cooldown. You can make temporary shrinking materials that shrink whatever they are touching so long as they are being touched not even needing the system to undo it.

Finally shrinking mana materials make great anchors for shrunk spaces letting you squeeze as much benefit out of them as you can – a void shrinking can usually shrink space unevenly by a factor anywhere from a few percent to 10 or 20x as much. A shrinking mana spell can usually shrink evenly and safely by 4x -12x (initially that seems worse but no mass is lost and the spell actually shrinks all the matter instead of compresses and deletes random portions of it to help compress it more).

A shrinking or void shrinking bound to rooms or hallways lined in shrinking materials can shrink by a factor multiplied by how well the core can shrink with shrinking mana. 12x as much, is common! Instead of shrinking space 20x you could shrink it 200 times! Hopefully, this guide has helped you at least somewhat. If it takes a while, keep in mind these are hard! Don't get discouraged and keep trying!

Every Void Core should be able to get both of these eventually, but don't feel bad if it takes a few years to get them right especially if you don't have the affinities for it. Excerpt obtained from the "Common_base_alteration_guides. dcs/void" website. Innearth was hard at work practicing Void alterations. He had read a guide on the internet and nearly immediately gotten the simplest form of deletion mana working. High off his quick success (I'm great! I'm the best!) he had immediately moved to his short-term goal of shrinking mana/a better shrinking spell to shrink yggdrasil… and hit a huge roadblock. He hadn't gotten it working at all. Not even close. After a just a week of this, he had calmed down and returned to taking it slow and steady (by getting a better hand of deletion mana like the guide had recommended). His early success with pure element deletion remained…

but the guide didn't seem to convey how hard it was to switch from deletion of pure elements to deleting abstract ones. He was currently attempting to better fix his washrooms by making them delete only waste. Of the last twenty attempts he had made… two had mostly worked correctly. Not a good pass rate. He thought he was starting to notice the subtle changes in colour and texture of deletion mana… but actually purposefully making those changes and getting it to focus on the correct concept was beyond him.

It seems to be interacting with the mana inside of objects? Like, Void mana mixing with Wood mana in a branch for example and becoming wood deletion? Or sometimes branch deletion or nature deletion or straight object deletion… That's the problem I think. I have to focus on mixing it with the correct environmental mana and actually making sure the environmental mana I'm mixing it with is the one I want…

but that wasn't mentioned in the guide and it seems like different concepts are harder to interact with and now I'm just getting annoyed I can't get it working consistently so maybe it's a completely different idea… Innearth was constantly paying attention (at least in part) to the chat… and so he was instantly pulled out of his training when the part of his attention focused there noticed something noteworthy. Abe: I've been slowly talked around to the idea. We are going whaling!

ZeMadDoctor: we figured we might as well go as strong as we can. That means killing one or more void whales for fertilizer. Innearth: I'm surprised you went for it Abe? Thought you were frightened of them? Also what makes you think you can even scratch them? Abe: Okay first off. I've been and am being logical – not afraid or cowardly. There is a difference man. Second off we have a plan. Let me lay it out there real simple like in a three step process. #1 New portal. Make sure its far away from the facility.

#2 Proper setup and defenses. Innearth you should help us make a small shielded area I already volunteered you to make us a cosmic void bunker. Finally #3 Boom. Profit. ZeMadDoctor: … He got part of the idea across. I convinced him to make nuke mana materials for me in a safe location and I've been experimenting on them since. Innearth: surprised you went for that as well Abe. Thought you were staying away from that material? Abe: forever making me sound like a wimp.

I'm not sticking it anywhere in my dungeon or anywhere near my dungeon. I'm not even making it myself! Just printing a block for doc and letting him do the rest. Brutality Queen: seems like docs pretty persuasive huh. Abe: … Innearth: what makes you think a "nuke" will be enough to kill it? ZeMadDoctor: I'm not sure if it would be, so I'm not even going to try. If you let me explain the plan properly it will make more sense Abe skipped some important details. ZeMadDoctor: Step 1: The payload.

I'm making a giant harpoon designed to penetrate the whale's thick skin. Been testing on nullstone. Smaller demons. Pretty sure it should work but cosmic void mana on the tip would probably make for the best piercing method if that's okay. The Veil inertia as I'm calling it doesn't count as a magical effect as far as demons are concerned so cosmic void is a pretty good counter for demon resistance. ZeMadDoctor: Inside this harpoon, I've set the nuke mana to explode on impact.

I've already tested out how to prevent it from exploding immediately – for some reason it reacts to air so I've set it up in an air-tight but easily crumpled and adjacent to an air pocket sort of ignition mechanism. This has all been thoroughly tested in my new prototyping area and my experimentation monster has run some simulations and determined it should work perfectly with no chance of failure so long as it actually hits.

It's even set up to go off a half-second after initial impact to try and concentrate the explosion inside of the whale instead of on its surface. ZeMadDoctor: But wait! Even though nuke mana seems powerful on its own I'm not confident in it being able to kill a void whale with its general mana resistance… I want to be completely sure about it SO! Following Innearth's recipe and using the filtration system he helped me set up (I hope this was okay). I made some kinetic essence.

This liquid is surrounding the nuke cartridge on all sides and it will hopefully convert all or most of the nuke's fire, heat, destruction, radiation… all those effects the whale could shrug off will be converted straight to kinetic energy. Abe: They don't need to know this… Innearth: No, knowing all this is helping me come around to the idea it might just work. Continue! What else have you done? ZeMadDoctor: Of course. Okay so the location will be a fresh spot of the void.

A new portal purposefully dragged down deep into deep void… protected with cosmic void as abe mentioned I hope that's okay and hidden with time mana. ZeMadDoctor: We will lure the whale by dangling a demonic mana monster in from of the hidden bunker – I told you all about how crazy demons are for demonic mana bait didn't I? Anyways my harpoon cannon will shoot the payload when we get a demon big enough to be worth it and then the hardest part of this plan will begin. ZeMadDoctor: Collecting the corpse.

We want to drag the whole thing to the facility. But opening a portal at this stage and that big might be dangerous… well have to fight off all the scavengers the whole way. And make sure to close the portal properly once they get through. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Innearth: Okay I'm on board. You've clearly thought this through I'm suitably impressed. I'll help tip your harpoon and make your bunker it sounds like it might actually work!

I feel like I should react to being a critical part of this plan without being told until now… but hey it sounds fun! Abe: See! I told you he'd go for it. Whaling! Whaling with explosives! Who could possibly not want to help! ZeMadDoctor: Let me share the staged crafting area we have setup. It's a cad overlay in my experimentation mana room. I keep flipping it to "fully in the system" to prevent the nuke from accidentally going off.

Innearth was invited to a system panel similar to the ones used in the dungeon games… but with more bells and whistles and different focuses now that they were a higher tier and doc a different core. It was… fun coming in near the end of a project and contributing critical parts. As much as being a part of the whole process was fun this made Innearth feel special and needed in a different sort of way. Only he could do this!

Once the modified nuke harpoon was finished Innearth helped build a small bunker at a fresh spot of void and their stakeout began. It's kind of weird to think about how we are nowhere near the facility despite all the portals being made by doc at the Samish initial location… Thinking about the void confuses me a lot I should just accept it. Once both the bunker and loaded harpoon cannon were locked into place they were done… but after a few minutes, Doc sent a hesitant message.

ZeMadDoctor: I'm not good at this sort of thing so sorry if I'm asking this in the wrong way. I already owe you but can you also set up a doorway so we can better see the whale coming? Like what you made for us recently? Innearth: Yeah sure, We are all in this together and all that. Instead of making a doorway and weakening their bunker, Innearth made a round "window" stuck on the outside that looked out into the void.

He twisted together circuits haphazardly following a purpose known only to him and his master circuit builder intuition… then told his friends to expand into it. As a material cosmic void allowed them all to comfortably claim and "sit in" the porthole giving them a nice wide view of their bait and the surroundings. High detailed view of right in front of them… steadily less and less accurate of a view going out far in every direction.

From the outside a bump of greyish black on a similarily grey surface was the only indication they were there… a bunker demons couldn't see floating in completely silent void. Waiting was calming in a way. Small demons kept coming and eating or attempting to eat their bait – they kept having to kill and drag the demons away which was a funny thought. Just a year or two ago this level of demon would have had Innearth frozen in fear and now they were squished like particularly annoying bugs. Waiting was...

calming but Innearth still felt like filling the time with idle conversation. Innearth: Conversation topic! Hey doc… you mentioned having told us about demonic mana being bait… but I don't actually remember you doing so? Was I not paying attention? What's that about I thought demonic mana instantly summoned a demon if used in a monster? ZeMadDoctor: Oh! That's what happens in "the real world" It's because… okay do you know anything about the shape of souls? Do you want the long explanation?

Innearth thought briefly of the weird sort of quasar shape of dungeons souls in comparison to the blobs most souls were before responding Innearth: Yeah I think so. A blob? Some are different but most are just a three-dimensional blob. ZeMadDoctor: You haven't experimented much with death mana have you? Recycling souls? Just dipped your influence in slightly? We should make a party of playing with undead in the facility some time remind me okay?

ZeMadDoctor: Anyways I don't know how much of this is a recap but here we go. Souls are typically three-dimensional blobs yes that vaguely rest inside and conform to the shape of living bodies. They don't fully exist in the world they just kind of overlay it… and they only really interact with mana and something about "life" *(or death) ZeMadDoctor: Life souls are positive. +Soul. Death souls are negative. -Soul. These two soul allignments exist on a… sort of number line okay?

Stronger life aligned souls are more positive stronger death aligned souls are more negative. ZeMadDoctor: Demonic mana twists materials and more importantly twists the soul it corrupts when you make a dungeon monster into being four dimensional. Mana can't negate itself as part of a spell so a positive and negative alignment at the same time…

instead of a "0 soul" you get a "imaginary +i or –i soul" it kind of makes the new alignment perpendicular to both life and death on that number line I mentioned before and either of them can twist the new souls alignment around in different ways. Sometime like (+4 - 2j)soul… ZeMadDoctor: anyways! In the "real world" that cracked and four dimensional soul sticks out into the void right. Its an incredibly tasty lure that demons can grab onto and follow all the way back to the body in the real world.

That's why it "summons" demons. They are grabbing onto the mana pool/pure mana floating around in the void and using the soul as a sort of doorway to drag themselves into reality. Innearth almost tuned doc out, suddenly remembering the description for dungeon souls had "four-dimensional" in it… does that mean demons could just grab onto our inventory and drag themselves to reality any time they want??? … no maybe we are an exception… or maybe that's why our inventories can't hold magical materials?

Only pure elements? So that's why we are safe the demons don't have mana to grab onto! … or something. Innearth focused once more on Doc's explanation. ZeMadDoctor: In the void this doesn't really happen. It still makes a four dimensional soul and that soul and body are still really tasty for demons… but because they already exist in a place with more dimensions they don't end up summoning demons. I actually have a bunch of these "imaginary soul" monsters in the facility right now if you want to go check them out.

All the rats with yellow dots on their tails are the imaginary ones they are much better at casting spells than their normal counterparts. Innearth: Huh. So demonic mana doesn't make them insane? That's interesting. I'm looking now they seem relatively normal all things considered I was imagining they would be obviously demonic somehow. ZeMadDoctor: In the void no. not insane. If they walked through into reality they might?

But then they would be summoning demons like – A literal wall of teeth closed in on the bait causing Doc to post his message cut off and focus on the plan. Kinetic controls in the air twisted opening up a flap and shooting out their harpoon at a high velocity. A faint whirlpool of purplish atmosphere began spinning behind it giving the appearance of a funnel as the spikey spear shot forward on a mission.

The flap behind the harpoon closed a microsecond later and triggered something that caused the harpoon to push back two ethereal tethers that stuck onto the bunker and began pushing hard. With something to push off of, the harpoon spun even faster and began accelerating – twin rocket spikes on the back twisting and braiding the kinetic tether in a complicated pattern as it went.

The twin teathers looked somewhat like a steadily growing rope as the harpoon shot forwards – their braided shape did not look like something that could have been grown in real-time at this speed and the back of the harpoon was now a blur to Innearth's senses. I'm well aware how hard it is to move through the void… it resists motion, Doc isn't a kinetic core for nothing. In front of their missile a massive eye tracked the harpoon barreling towards it.

The eye seemed curious but not worried about the projectile's small size – even as it crossed the distance in a single blink of its lid. The tip of the harpoon was shaped like a mostly retracted umbrella – jagged rings of spikes behind it to make sure it couldn't be easily extracted – and it passed through nullstone teeth with a billow of dust. The demon's eye briefly seemed surprised in this long-drawn-out second and its mouth began to open…

even as something deep inside the harpoon broke and the explosion started. A proverbial roar of kinetic energy burst forth… so strong it physically pushed the void atmosphere in all directions tempering one side of the cosmic void bunker even more and the shockwave travelled past them carrying bits of gore in all directions. The lower jaw and half the upper portion of the whale were just… gone. Deep within its "belly" a black fractured and goo spurting rainbow core…

no that was a bad description this wasn't a monster. A rainbow "void heart" lay beating its last "breath". It lay burned and broken and shuddered a wave of void atmosphere seeming to travel through the entire demon's body before finally, it was still. Abe: Ggggogoogogogoogogogoogogo! A trapdoor slid open on either side of the bunker and two ascended rats swam out in strange armoured suits.

The harpoon itself seemed to have been completely vaporized, but surprisingly its kinetic rope remained and had bound to a somewhat random section of demon flesh. Whatever controls had made up 'it' were now broken, the rope slowly slowly retracting pulling its "harpooned" carcass back towards the bunker even as a portal unfurled between the swimming rats. Around them… floating in void were countless silvery droplets of blood. They floated like a frozen rainstorm… or liquid snowstorm as strange as that sounded.

The smallest drops were quickly shifting in a nauseating manner. Spikes and veins and vibrating bumps bursting out of them and turning them into demons in real-time. Like gross little tadpoles, within minutes there were dozens of drops swimming about attacking each other and growing stronger before their very eyes. Like vultures, shapes swam about in the distance – Innearths porthole distorting them due to how far away they were until all the dungeons could see were indistinct shapes… circling closer and closer.

The two space suit-covered rats pulled the portal apart like a massive blanket – its momentum somehow carrying over but warping the portal as it did which caused a rippling tear to travel towards the whale. Void "rippled" in strange swirls about parts of this "blanket" as it began to wrap around and teleport the front section of the carcass… bits of void atmosphere jumped in density and others thinned as if this massive hunk of flesh being transported required more from the portal than normal.

Innearth noticed with alarm it looked almost like a line was forming behind the portal pointing at an odd angle off into space – physically showing off where the portal led to? That's our facility! … they weren't going to make it, but everything was happening too fast for Innearth to think straight. Innearth's worry… his fear was communicated to his monsters and the closest to helping them perked up.

The snake scout came bursting out of the portal a second later – its thick body pressing out further and continuing in a rush that wrapped all the way around the whale and headed back in on the other side. Looping around in this massive U-turn, the snake began to pull. Its addition helped the carcass get pulled through faster and now Innearth was running through an estimate that included the snake's help.

Its length was now close to 25km – an absolutely insane length for one monster – but it was still barely enough. Its skin had seemed to meld to its tunnel at some point in its last ascension and it looked like an crystalline armoured tube was pulling the whale back. Innearth found himself zoomed in on the process more invested than he had been in ages watching adventurers.

The snake pulled, the portal wrapped and a wave of demons poured forth from all directions snapping and biting at the still-visible sections of the carcass like piranhas. Some took advantage of the confusion to eat the scraps floating in the void around them, others seemed to prefer the snake scout's magical flesh better than the whale's – nullstone-like teeth sheering through the armour in countless tiny bites. And then they were through.

The massive portal closed with the two rats jumping through to the other side last second and the cloud of demons began to attack one another and slowly disperse. On the other side of the portal lay the staging area. Innearth had volunteered up the section he had begun building before getting bored – a massive empty box of sorts attached to the facility that had taken him over a month of grinding to make…

With such an obvious difference in effect between the two locations it was pretty obvious dungeon influence stopped magical matter from demonizing – droplets of whale blood hung in the "staging area" inert. All the demons who died stayed dead and the snake scout went on a rampage eating and ripping apart every small demon that had damaged it. The dungeons celebrated their successful whale hunt. Meanwhile, at the hunt site – a few minutes after their portal closed – a second void whale came sniffing around.

It slurped up all the abandoned scraps along with quite a few demons – scaring the rest of the scavengers away. A third whale came moments after that and fought them briefly... appearing annoyed it had missed out before both began circling away looking for more scraps. Abe: let's hunt these two as well! Quick! They are right there! That was awesome. Let's hunt another! We are invincible! ZeMadDoctor: I don't trust this area anymore. If we need another body we should do it at a fresh location and wait a while…

I don't like that the void seemed like it was showing them the way to our facility for a bit I want to keep these to simple safe infrequent hunts. It seems to be fine this time but if we do this too many times in one place it might lead them straight to us. Innearth: I don't know if cosmic void can be demonized… but we should grab that (the bunker) when we move as well, I'd hate to see an indestructible demon. Abe: askfkasjf. That would indeed be "a bad time" you are speaking true facts right now.

As the group finished their plans and began coming down from the initial excitement, a system prompt appeared – distracting them. System log displayed due to compounding first time effects. Combat log: Non official party member '[ZeMadDoctor]' used custom stationary projectile weapon 'nuke harpoon cannon'. Combined party effort artifact 'Nuke harpoon' landed critical damage upon '5km long void whale'.

'5km long void whale' died 2 minutes later due to 'massive internal damage' Error met while distributing combat experience. Error log: Dungeons are not equipped to use combat experience. Experience to be applied to trap or monster used to deal damage. Trap manually activated, non living variation. Combat experience to be ignored. Error:' demon whale bounty' tenet prevents combat experience from being lost while killing high level demons and superseding 'non combat cultivation for' tenet. Escalating log... Timeout.

Thank you for defending our world [dungeons]! Due to no precedent being set upon your scenario, a decision has been left for you to make. Option A: Apply combat experience directly at [25% conversion efficiency]. [40k experience] distributed [three ways] directly to party members [Abe, Innearth, ZeMadDoctor]. Option B: Apply full combat experience to party factions using non combatant leader precedent.

([160k experience] distributed to [three dungeon parties] and then split evenly between [every monster] in said [dungeons]. Option C: Donate experience to 3rd party equipped to accept the donation. Option A Option B Option C Innearth: you two seeing this? What should we do?...